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Please find the latest book by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which uses sophisticated modeling and available data to develop future scenarios exploring the range of climate change consequences for agriculture, food security, and resource management in West Africa. It provides country-specific maps and analysis and policy options.

Cassia Fistula..this tree often flowers during the spring season in North Eastern Part of India which forecasts possible thunderstorm in near future..Last year I noticed flowering of this magnificant plant twice..and i observed that..last year during the early winters alongwith the flowering of this plant a few spells of thunderstorms followed which is perhaps an uncharacteristic phenomenon of the weather of this part of the country which usually remains dry. So is this a common implication of climatic change in this part of the world??

If you look for climate experts, you are in the wrong place here. Here are mainly journalists, no climate experts. So you should look elsewhere or just go to the next Climate Conference in Durban/South Africa end of November. Ask your questions there.

Or ask at the Second National Research Conference on Climate Change to be held at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) from July 11-13 2011. There you'll find the answers.

The problem with you is that your knowledge of natural sciences is comparable low. Thus it would take too much time to give you private lessons in this group in order to teach you the basics. There are univerity courses for that.

This is one of your many wrong assumptions. It is an interpretation which is not grounded. And you use it to make a statement out of this, which is propaganda.

The problem to discuss with you is, that you take singularities and give them a weight which they do not have. All what you mentioned, is already part of the climate models and thus considered.

Climate is a most complicated system. Since the 1970s, i.e. since about 40 years hundreds of different scientists looked very carefully to every parameter which might have an influence on the climate developments. Mathematicians, physics, chemists, meteorologists, oceanographers, geologists, biologists, and so on. Each of them could only concentrate on singularities, however, they always kept in mind that climate is a huge connected system wich could only be tackled with computers as tools for research. Computers with peak perfomances of more than 158 TeraFlops per second, thousands of processor cores, and data storage capacities of more than 100 PetaBytes.

You will not be able to question the results of 40 years of worldwide research with problematising single issues.

When I was studying oceanography in the 1970s, I already looked a climate issues in the Arctic, where I tried to find out how much organic substance from the upper layers of the Arctic Sea is broken down by bacteria in lower depths. A very, very small contribution to the total system analysis.

The media came only in 1983, when the scientists sought the public in order to tell tham that the climate is changing. Then the media were silent for another 15 years. They came in again in 2000, when the scientists were sure that they found the anthorpologic signal in their data. Only since then the media continually report about the progresses. Do not blame the carrier of the news...

As long as you are not in the position to study one of the sciences which contribute to climate research for 10, 20 or even 30 years, you will not be in the position to discuss singular concerns which you may have picked up during your school time.

So you are right in one argument: It is a question of believe and trust, as a single person cannot incorporate such a wealth of knowledge, which is not even static, but constantly changing and increasing. But this has nothing to do with religion, as religion is not based on nature and is resistent to changes.

The problem is that whenever people are not in the position to understand, they turn to religion for an interpretation. Most of us do not have yet learned to live with uncertainties.

One of your concerns was, that energy does not get lost. But the earth is no closed system! There is an outer space. Thus energy can of course get lost! And it can of course be gained in relation to the earth and atmosphere systems. Think bigger!

Second: The many "likely" and "very likely" mainly refer to the future, not so much to the past, because the future developments are influenced by humankind's behaviour in future, which they do not know. Thus they work with scenarios. So I again point you to the IPCC reports. Generally, science is never exact, thus scientists need always to be cautious. Like in physics, it all has to do with probabilities.

Third: It is more or less irrelevant for the current climate change what happened in the past. But pay attention to the time frames: There are many natural cycles: Tectonic (1,000,000,000 to 1,000,000 years), Malenkovic (100,000; 41,000; 21,000 years), Dansgaard-Oeschker (around 5,000 years), NAO (semi-oscillating 50 to 100 years), ENSO (oscillating within several years). The main reasons for climate changes in the earth's history are known since the 1960s (the time when scientists realised that the earth is warming): Mitchell, J. M., 1976: An Overview of Climatic Variability and Its Causal Mechanisms. Quaternary Research 6, 481-493.

Fourth: The main concern is not that it becomes warmer, but that it becomes warmer in such a speed (within less than 200 years), a speed which the earth have not seen since a million of years (man is on earth only 4 to 2 million years).

Fifths: You should take some basic lessons in physics, chemistry and biology: The physical behaviour of gases like CO2 plays only a minor role in the oceans. CO2 reacts chemically with sea water (carbon compounds and H+ ions)! As the sea water warms, reactivity increases and more CO2 is bound chemically. CO2 also reacts biologically with in the oceans (biological pump, photosynthesis)! But although the oceans take up more CO2, the CO2 content of the atmosphere is still rising. Lakes an rivers play no role in this compared to the oceans, which cover 73% of the earth's surface).

Generally: Pay attention to the orders of magnitude in time scales and dimensions.

just a brief message. You may have learned about the outcome from the Bangkok climate change talks over a week ago. It's not smooth and settled as one may have expected after the agreements reached in Cancun. Negotiators played a war of words, and didn't bring any much progress on what should have been done like the fund, the technology transfer. What's more is that some groups tried to narrow down the talks. Watch out!

and other scientific sources, nealy two thirds of the world's population live in the coastal area. This number still increases continually. For 2025 it is expected that 75% of the world's population live in the coastal area. Thus less and less people rely on rivers...